dead. They never had to name her together--they only said "she"; and
Nutkins freely conceded that she had taught him everything he knew.
When Beatrice and Muriel said "she" they referred to Mrs. Churchley.
Adela had reason to believe she should never marry, and that some day
she should have about a thousand a year. This made her see in the
far future a little garden of her own, under a hill, full of rare and
exquisite things, where she would spend most of her old age on her
knees with an apron and stout gloves, with a pair of shears and a
trowel, steeped in the comfort of being thought mad.

One morning ten days after her scene with Godfrey, on coming back
into the house shortly before lunch, she was met by Miss Flynn with
the notification that a lady in the drawing-room had been waiting for
her for some minutes. "A lady" suggested immediately Mrs. Churchley.
It came over Adela that the form in which her penalty was to descend
would be a personal explanation with that misdirected woman. The
lady had given no name, and Miss Flynn hadn't seen Mrs. Churchley;
nevertheless the governess was certain Adela's surmise was wrong.

"Is she big and dreadful?" the girl asked.

Miss Flynn, who was circumspection itself, took her time. "She's
dreadful, but she's not big." She added that she wasn't sure she
ought to let Adela go in alone; but this young lady took herself
throughout for a heroine, and it wasn't in a heroine to shrink from
any encounter. Wasn't she every instant in transcendent contact with
her mother? The visitor might have no connexion whatever with the
drama of her father's frustrated marriage; but everything to-day for
Adela was part of that.